Bluetooth® is one of the most widely-produced technology standards in history, with approximately 300 million devices shipped in 2005, 500 million predicted for 2006, and one billion product shipments forecast by the year 2008.
From its inception in the late 1990s, Bluetooth's® promise has always been connectivity, particularly Personal Area Networking (PAN), where users make ad hoc connections to Bluetooth®-enabled computers, kiosks, handheld products and various other devices within a short (10 meter or 100 meter) range around their Bluetooth® device.
But the driving force behind the tremendous growth of Bluetooth® has almost exclusively come from another attribute of the technology; namely, cable replacement: for wireless mice, keyboards and other computer peripherals, and especially wireless headsets for mobile telephony, in cell phones, smart phones and the like. As for Bluetooth's® promise for easy PAN connectivity, it remains largely unfulfilled more than 7 years after it's initial rollout in 1999.
The inventor and his company have long been dedicated to computer and communication device connectivity, producing many novel and useful products and technologies aimed at ease of use, secure and robust connections and maximum data throughput for a given channel, system or technology. Consequently, it was natural that we would be attracted to the promises of Bluetooth® almost since the standard was announced.
Design application-level software has been developed to maximize Bluetooth® user experience, and proprietary Input/Output (I/O) middleware to access Bluetooth's® Serial Communication Port (SPP) standard, occupying an actual or virtual COM Port on computers, Personal Data Assistants (PDAs), smart phones and the like.
As useful as this software was, other challenges remained to user acceptance of Bluetooth® connectivity in systems and devices finding their way to market. In 2003 I filed a Provisional Patent Application with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) entitled “Communication Devices with Self-Contained Software” (Application No. 60/452,220, filing date Mar. 5, 2003), focusing on the addition of on-device memory to Bluetooth® devices. The self-contained memory stored application and install software and documentation, with ample space available for user files, presentations, photos, music and the like. The Prior Art and Prior Disclosure sections to follow will describe these developments in further detail.
User-friendly applications and built-in memory made Bluetooth® considerably more compelling for Personal Area Networking and ad hoc connectivity, but installation and setup remained sufficiently difficult as to frighten off all but the most persistent and “nerdy” users. The dominant Widcomm® install software was cumbersome and often unstable, sometimes working and sometimes not, especially on computers with late-version Windows® XP operating system (OS).
Since the inception of Windows® XP, Service Pack 2 (SP2), Bluetooth® devices have assumed a certain degree of “plug-and-play” capability, being automatically recognized and installed by the OS. In this now-prevalent case, Widcomm and other industry drivers are no longer recognized by Windows®, which installs it's own, profile-limited Bluetooth® drivers which further add to the complexity and confusion of hapless users.
Consider: under Windows® XP/SP2, every remote Bluetooth® device must occupy one COM Port as Master (“Outgoing” mode in Windows® speak) and another distinct COM Port in Slave (“Incoming”) mode. Moreover, these 2 COM Ports for each and every Bluetooth® device discovered and added under SP2 are distinct from every other Bluetooth® node, even for 2 USB dongles, say, of the same brand and model. Put another way, if my personal area network comprises 20 devices—cell phones, PDAs, kiosks and other computers—I am forced to keep track of 40 different incoming and outgoing COM Port combinations.
With a process so complicated, cumbersome and distracting, it is little wonder that Bluetooth® connectivity with or between computers has never caught on. This inventor and his company have developed novel and proprietary systems, including hardware and software, that overcome all of the present barriers to Bluetooth® connectivity and use, with the potential to open a wireless portal between millions of computers and hundreds of millions of mobile phones, PDAs and other computers.
With driver installation in seconds at the click of a button or icon, the hardware described below is connected to its host computer and ready to discover or be discovered by a remote Bluetooth® device. The Advanced BlueKey® (ABK) device disclosed in this application occupies a single COM Port for both Master and Slave, and that same single COM Port for each and every BlueKey® device that is connected to that host.
With discovery complete, menu-driven BlueKey® application software on each end allows the user(s) to print, view, edit, run, play or share files, folders, music, photos, albums, emails or presentations by selecting the data to transfer and clicking “Apply,” a process many times simpler than any known Bluetooth® operation of today.